“M-mother,” stammered the Master of Fox Hounds, “you will lean over us, won’t you?”

“Mother hasn’t decided—­”

“Oh, muvver!” wailed Josie; and a howl of grief and dismay rose from Winthrop, modified to a gurgle by the forbidden finger.

“You will, won’t you?” begged Drina.  “We’ve been pretty bad, but not bad enough for that!”

“I—­Oh, yes, I will.  Stop that noise, Winthrop!  Josie, I’m going to lean over you—­and you, too, Clemence, baby.  Katie, take those dogs away immediately; and remember about the marmalade.”

Reassured, smiling through tears, the children trooped off, it being the bathing hour; and Mrs. Gerard threw her fur stole over one shoulder and linked her slender arm in her brother’s.

“You see, I’m not much of a mother,” she said; “if I was I’d stay here all day and every day, week in and year out, and try to make these poor infants happy.  I have no business to leave them for one second!”

“Wouldn’t they get too much of you?” suggested Selwyn.

“Thanks.  I suppose that even a mother had better practise an artistic absence occasionally.  Are they not sweet? What do you think of them?  You never before saw the three youngest; you saw Drina when you went east—­and Billy was a few months old—­what do you think of them?  Honestly, Phil?”

“All to the good, Ninette; very ornamental.  Drina—­and that Josephine kid are real beauties.  I—­er—­take to Billy tremendously.  He told me that he’d locked up his nurses.  I ought to have interfered.  It was really my fault, you see.”

“And you didn’t make him let them out?  You are not going to be very good morally for my young.  Tell me, Phil, have you seen Austin?”

“I went to the Trust Company, but he was attending a directors’ confab.  How is he?  He’s prosperous anyhow, I observe,” with a humorous glance around the elaborate hallway which they were traversing.

“Don’t dare laugh at us!” smiled his sister.  “I wish we were back in Tenth Street.  But so many children came—­Billy, Josephine, Winthrop, and Tina—­and the Tenth Street house wasn’t half big enough; and a dreadful speculative builder built this house and persuaded Austin to buy it.  Oh, dear, and here we are among the rich and great; and the steel kings and copper kings and oil kings and their heirs and dauphins. Do you like the house?”

“It’s—­ah—­roomy,” he said cheerfully.

“Oh!  It isn’t so bad from the outside.  And we have just had it redecorated inside.  Mizner did it.  Look, dear, isn’t that a cunning bedroom?” drawing him toward a partly open door.  “Don’t be so horridly critical.  Austin is becoming used to it now, so don’t stir him up and make fun of things.  Anyway you’re going to stay here.”

“No, I’m at the Holland.”

“Of course you’re to live with us.  You’ve resigned from the service, haven’t you?”